Earlier this week I posted a link to the video provided by MEMRI of the Friday sermon by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris in Gaza, broadcast on Palestinian Authority television and linked by Martin Peretz in his current New Republic column. The MEMRI video shows the assembled worshipers sitting thoughtfully and listening to the sheik’s rant. Peretz declared himself “appalled.” MEMRI TV has also posted a transcript of excerpts of the sermon (click here).
Above is a photo of Frank Zappa as “Sheik Yerbouti.” There seems to me a Pythonesque element to the rapt attention of the worshipers listening to the Gaza sheik. I don’t know if laughter is an appropriate response, but it makes me feel a little better.
MEMRI’s latest television report is of the update by Member of Parliament George Galloway on Lord Haw-Haw. Galloway appears to be promoting war on British soldiers among others through interviews and a speech broadcast on Arab channels: “Foreigners are raping two beautiful daughters, Jerusalem and Baghdad.” (MEMRI has posted an appeal for support here.)
The Brits executed Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce) for treason after the war, despite the fact that he was not a British citizen. The father of our occasional reader William Shawcross — British Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross — successfully argued that Joyce’s “possession of a British passport, even though he had lied about his nationality in order to get it, entitled him to British diplomatic protection in Germany and therefore he owed allegiance to the King.” Is it too much to hope that the Brits might recover in full the “moral health and martial vigor” that they once had?
UPDATE: Peter C. Bunker is the proprietor of Wires From the Bunker. Bunker draws the same analogy that I do:
Over the past week or more our new British Overseas Neo-Koranic Emmisary for bi-Relational Studies (BONKERS for short) has been busy doing the Arab TV chat show circuit. Sadly, however, some of the best ideas don’t always pan out well…For Mr Galloway has not been conducting himself as we might have hoped.
On Syrian TV on 31 July Scotland’s answer to the Lord Haw-Haw (who came from my native Manchester) has been fomenting incitement to violence in the Arab world on a scale that would shame our own dear Muslim clerics…
The rest of Bunker’s post is accessible here.
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